


The Soho Bookshop Job

by Poetry



Category: Good Omens (TV), Leverage
Genre: Crossover, Footnotes, Gen, Non-Chronological, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-07-08 00:24:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19860499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/pseuds/Poetry
Summary: Crowley asks Leverage to stop the shady corporation trying to buy out Aziraphale's bookshop. He gets rather more than he bargained for.





	The Soho Bookshop Job

**Author's Note:**

> The present-day storyline is set post-canon for Good Omens and mid-S3 for Leverage. The flashbacks jump around in time. (Try not to think about the timelines too much.)
> 
> Thanks to @litluminary, @purronronner and @c-rowlesdraws for helping me on this one.

###  **I. Hardison**

  


_Then: Hardison & Crowley._

****  


**AJC_snake666**

Hello.

  


**ageofthegeek**

Oh. My. God. I cannot believe I am actually talking to you right now. You are a freaking LEGEND.

  


**ageofthegeek**

That hack where you made all the red lights in London last two seconds longer? That was EPIC. The forums have no idea how y’all did that. I don’t even know what you need *me* for.

  


**AJC_snake666**

You’ll have to break into the server room of the FCC for the hack. I don’t travel much these days, so I’m contracting it out. I’m sending over a file with the scripts.

  


**ageofthegeek**

OMG I get to read AJC_snake666 code!!!

  


**AJC_snake666**

It’s just a job. You wanted to stick it to the FCC, didn’t you? Focus on that.

  


**ageofthegeek**

That’s not why I took this job.[1] It’s about the ARTISTRY. Learning from the best in the business! I cannot WAIT to see this.

  


**AJC_snake666**

Oh, don’t you even try it. I encrypted the file.

  


**ageofthegeek**

Don’t underestimate me, baby.

  


**AJC_snake666**

Baby?!

  


**ageofthegeek**

It’s just the general term of baby, it’s not – just don’t. I got this.

  


**ageofthegeek**

Ooooh, this encryption algorithm is FUN.

  


**AJC_snake666**

I am serious, ageofthegeek, don’t read it! Just put it on a USB drive and plug it into the database server! I encrypted that file for a reason!

  


**ageofthegeek**

Hahaha!!! TOO LATE. I’m in!

  


**ageofthegeek**

Dude, this code is weird as hell. Why are there so many goto statements?[2]

  


**ageofthegeek**

What the hell are these variable names? Some of the characters aren’t standard ASCII. It’s like they’re burning into my screen or something.

  


**ageofthegeek**

I’m getting kinda dizzy looking at this. I think I’m gonna just .tyh ‘4hytniietihaac[3]

  


**AJC_snake666**

Ah, bless it. I suppose I’ll just have to break into that server room myself.

  


_Now._

  


When the rest of the Leverage crew asks Hardison how he finds their clients, he just grins and says, “That’s my special sauce, baby. Can’t give away the secret.” The truth is, he vets them in lots of different ways. This one got his foot in the door because he’s the legendary hacker AJC_snake666. He doesn’t look like Hardison expected.

In Hardison’s experience, nerds like to read comics and watch movies where the nerds are all mysterious and cool because in real life, nerds aren’t all that mysterious and _definitely_ don’t look cool. This dude? _Cool_. And he ain’t a day under forty. Still rocking that whole 90s alt-rocker vibe. It's not fair. Hardison is supposed to be the One Cool Nerd around here.

AJC_snake666, cool dad rock hacker, leans back, looks at Hardison and Nate, and says, “Which of you is ageofthegeek? No, hang on. Don’t tell me.” He tilts his head toward Hardison. “You. With the fanboy face.”

Hardison grins and holds out a hand. “Age of the geek, baby. I’m Alec Hardison.”

He shakes Hardison’s hand and smirks. “Right. The general term of ‘baby,’ was it? Anthony J Crowley.”

“Nate Ford,” Nate says, offering his own hand for a shake. “How’d you two meet?”

“Tried to contract him for a job,” Crowley says. “Didn’t work out, but we stayed in touch. Hacker forums, that sort of thing.”

“I mod the one he hangs out in,” Hardison says proudly.

“Oh? Uh huh.” Nate tries to smile like he knows what they’re talking about and gestures them to a booth table in the London bar where they’re meeting up. “So. How can we help you, Mr. Crowley?”

Crowley slithers into his side of the booth, jointless. Damn, he even _sits down_ all cool. “I have a… friend. Fell’s his name. Owns a bookshop in Soho. Prime real estate. He’s had some shady fellows come knocking, making offers. Turned them all down flat, he’s not interested in selling. It’s, uh, been in his family for centuries. But now they’ve served notice that his shop license is about to be revoked. _Building code violations._ As if he’d ever let his shop fall into disrepair!” Crowley draws almost, but not quite, fully upright in his outrage, then slumps again. “Anyway. It’s only a matter of time before _T’ruah Holdings_ takes the shop right out from under him. They’ll probably sell herbal face injections or tourist tat. Nothing like his books.”

Hardison leans forward. “So why don’t you just…” He makes keyboard gestures on the table. “Go get ‘em? Come on, man. I’ve seen your work. You’ve done bigger hacks than making a couple of files go away.”

Crowley grimaces. “I, um. Don’t have the resources I used to. Fallen on lean times, you might say. Cut off from… sources of funding. Same with my friend.”

“Speaking of your friend,” Nate says. “Why didn’t you bring Mr. Fell along with you?”

Crowley twitches a shoulder in a shrug. “Don’t think he’d approve of your methods. You’re going to have to do the job without telling him.”

Hardison splutters, “ _Our_ methods? They’re _your_ methods too! Are you saying your friend doesn’t know you’re AJC_snake666?”

“He knows my methods,” Crowley says. “But I’ve never used them to benefit him personally. We have a mutual non-interference policy.”

“Which you’re violating right now,” Nate points out.

“Eh,” Crowley says, shrugging with his whole body, somehow. “I’ve always bent the policy when it comes to rescuing him.”

“Mr. Crowley,” Nate says, clearly riding the bleeding edge of his patience. “We can’t guarantee Mr. Fell won’t find out about a con we’re running in his own shop. It’s enough of a job distracting the mark, let alone distracting the _client_.”

“Think of him as your straight man,”[4] Crowley says, wriggling his way out of the booth. “He’ll seem perfectly innocent to the mark because he _is_ perfectly innocent. At least in this case.” He says over his shoulder as he leaves, almost threateningly, “I’m sure you’ll do an _excellent_ job.”

Nate stares at the sway of Crowley’s long back as he walks away. “Are you sure you trust this guy?”

“No sir, I do not,” Hardison says. “I just checked his name, and he has no internet trail at all.[5] _None_. That’s just spooky. But his friend Mr. Fell? I already looked into him. He’s just a small bookshop owner in Soho, just like Crowley said. He ain’t done nothing wrong except get bad reviews on Yelp, and now he’s got some shady corporation breathing down his neck. Which makes this a case for Leverage.”

Nate sighs. “We’ll try to keep Mr. Fell out of it if we can. But if we can’t… his friend’s just going to have to live with it.”

  


###  **II. Parker**

  


_Then: Parker & Aziraphale._

  


Parker petted the lock with her left hand as she picked it with her right. It was a _good_ lock. An old design, at least fifty years, but secure and well-constructed. The tumblers whispered smoothly at her touch, then snicked into place.

She opened the service entrance to the bookshop slowly and smoothly, into a chaos of books. No, not a chaos – an order, but not one she could understand. She closed the door silently behind her and wondered where she was going to find the first edition Nostradamus in this mess; her employer had been very specific. One of the shelves beside her had a handwritten sign that read “Ambiguities Introduced By Overzealous Editors.” The next shelf didn’t have a sign at all. Parker scanned the spines quickly and moved on.

The next aisle had “Commonly Misinterpreted Revelations,” which looked promising. She browsed along the shelf, and when she reached the other end, she found it. A whisper of leather and old paper as she checked the edition. Nostradamus.

Out of the corner of her dark-adjusted eye, Parker spied a source of light. She froze.

Archie trained Parker not to make a sound when she was working, not even if the building she was robbing started burning down[6]. But none of his training had prepared her for the sight of a man reading by the light of a sourceless white light around his head. Parker inhaled sharply in surprise.

The man looked up and over his shoulder at her. His eyes glowed dark like coals in the impossible light. He blinked in surprise, which was all the time Parker needed to run for the service door, the Nostradamus tucked in one arm.

Just as her hand touched the doorknob, the lock snapped shut like a trap. She spun around. The man dropped his raised hand and said mildly, “I think you had better give me my book back, and then we can both forget about this entire unfortunate –”

As he spoke, Parker ran through exits in her head. Front door: locked. Windows: locked – she could try shattering one with a heavy book. Door to adjacent flat – that might be open. She bolted.

The man sighed impatiently, and the lock in that door, too, fell into place with a _snick_. Parker’s heart beat in her throat. Trapped. She’d have to break a window. Was there anything she could use as an explosive?

He appeared before her again, bathed in his own terrible light, flustered a little pink in the cheeks. “I am not going to report you to the authorities. I’d really rather just get back to my reading. Or is it the money you’re worried about? Whatever you were paid to break in here, I can match it. I simply need you to _give me my book back._ ”

It wasn’t about the money.[7] It was about her reputation. It was about Parker, who _always_ got away with the loot. But this wasn’t like any job she’d done before. She collected herself. _Work the problem. Buy yourself time._ She said, “Twenty thousand pounds. That’s my take.”

“Only _twenty thousand_? For a first edition Nostradamus?” The man looked genuinely outraged. He went for the ancient cash register in the back of the shop. “You’ve been undervalued, my sneaky friend.” Parker assessed windows and things to shatter them with while he opened the register with a _ka-ching_. He counted out old shillings and farthings with precise manicured fingers. Parker watched, wide-eyed, and checked them against her mental inventory of old money. It was definitely enough to make it worth stiffing the shady collector who hired her. But was it worth the blow to her professional pride?

The bookshop owner came back from behind the counter and held out a handful of valuable old coins, raising his eyebrows expectantly. The light blazed around his head, and his eyes grew darker and deeper when they looked at the book she was holding, as if he might just draw the book back into himself like a black hole. Parker never looked at anything like that, not even her most favorite money, the very first printing of euros in their colorful stacks in her vault. She had always suspected there were strange monsters in the world, but she had never guessed that they might own bookshops.

Parker snatched the coins and gave him back the book. He checked it over for any sign of damage, and when he was satisfied, the light seemed to glow from inside his face too, beaming out in a smile. “Thank you. Have a good night, dear girl.” The lock clicked open in the door behind Parker, and she nearly stumbled in her hurry to escape.

Maybe she would come back here one day. But she was going to need a much better plan if she was going to steal from a _dragon_.

  


_Now_.

  


“We can’t go to that bookshop,” Parker says, staring at the slide Hardison has up on the screen in their temporary London headquarters. “It’s owned by a dragon.”

“Parker,” Nate says patiently, in that talking-to-crazy-people voice Parker hates. “We’ve got this. We’ve slain dragons before.”

Parker narrows her eyes at him. “You know I don’t use metaphors during briefings.”

“Eh, well,” Nate says, buying himself time. Parker’s throat tightens. This is like the time she knew something was wrong when she was on jury duty all over again. He doesn’t believe her. She’s just weird, crazy Parker.

“What makes you say he’s a dragon?” Sophie says, meeting Parker’s eyes levelly.

Parker relaxes. Sophie will listen, and Nate listens to Sophie. “I tried to steal a book from his shop, and he almost –” She hesitates. She’s not sure what he almost did to her, but it was something scary for sure. “He did this thing with his eyes that scared me.[8] And he could make lights out of nothing and lock doors without touching them. He wouldn’t have let me walk away with one of his books, ever. He’s a dragon, and the books are his hoard.”

“I believe you,” Eliot says. “I’ve seen a monster roaming this world, doing things I couldn’t explain. Stands to reason there might be more than one of them.”

“I believe you sensed something far out of the ordinary in that shop,” Sophie says. “But it may not have been what you think. Let me go and check it out. Trust me when I say I know what to look for.”

“Okay,” Parker says. “But I’m not going in there unless it’s safe. If the dragon sees me again, he might eat me.”

Eliot’s arm muscles move under his skin. “Nothing’s going to eat you, Parker.”

“Fine,” Nate says. “Parker, Eliot, help Hardison scope out T’ruah Holdings. Sophie and I are going to meet Mr. Fell.”

  


“T’ruah Holdings is just _weird_ ,” Hardison says, pulling up pages on his screen to show Parker and Eliot. “They started out with high-tech mercenary contracts like Halliburton, but now they’re branching out into real estate development.”

Eliot narrows his eyes. “I worked a security contract for them once.”

“Here’s the new CEO. She took over the company and started the new side hustle,” Hardison said, pulling up an image of a woman with iron-gray curls and a dark red pantsuit. “Hilda Guerra. Good cybersecurity on this lady, entirely professional presence on the net. We’re gonna need to break into her office to get the good stuff.” He grins. “Who’s in?”

“Me!” Parker says at the same time as Eliot. Breaking into the offices of a shady military contractor sounds way better than facing off against the dragon again without a plan.

  


###  **III. Sophie**

  


_Then: Sophie & Anathema._

  


Sophie didn’t introduce herself to Anathema as Sophie, but as _Dolores Pemberley, your new apprentice._

The Devices were known among witches for their skill at dowsing, just as Sophie’s family[9] was known for a keen eye for auras – which was of course more useful in Sophie’s line of work, but she could still appreciate the value of a good dowse. And so she’d set out to learn.

“Sweep the pendulum like _this_ ,” Anathema said, holding Sophie’s – Dolores’s, back then – hand in hers. The pendulum inscribed a neat arc above the forest floor. Anathema watched Dolores with unfocused eyes, so close there was warm breath on the side of Dolores’s neck, making her wonder whether Anathema was scrying her aura. Dolores had learned from such a young age that she did it unconsciously, all the time. She was so accustomed to seeing things about people that they couldn’t see about her that Anathema’s scrutiny unnerved her, a little.

Their forearms touched. Anathema’s aura reached toward hers, the boundaries fuzzing, scarlet bleeding into dark velvety gray. She was definitely flirting with Dolores. So Dolores did what she always does, and became what Anathema desired. She purred, “I think I’m starting to feel it. Would you like to show me your dowsing rod?”

Anathema laughed throatily and kissed her cheek, then her mouth. The pendulum swung out of control in their hands as they grappled their way into a proper snog. Dolores had enough sense to steer Anathema back to her car, and they made love in the backseat.

After, Dolores traced idle shapes on Anathema’s belly and said, “You threw yourself in with such wild abandon, my dear. You’re always so _controlled_ when we work. What got into you?”

Anathema stilled. “There’s a prophecy. About me.”

Ah, yes. The other talent the Devices were famous for, and far more jealously guarded than their dowsing tools. Dolores raised her eyebrows expectantly.

“It’s about someone I’m going to sleep with, one day,” Anathema said. “A witch-finder.”

Dolores grimaced. “Ugh. That’s awful. Why would you want to sleep with a witch-finder?”

“I don’t know,” Anathema said. She bit her lip. “Maybe I’ll like him. Maybe I’ll be into him. The thing is, the prophecies always come true. _Always_. So the way I feel about him doesn’t really matter. But until then – I want to have sex with people where it _does_ matter. That I’m attracted to them.” She reached out and traced Dolores’s face with two fingers. “I don’t know if he’ll be beautiful. But _you_ are.”

“Oh, Anathema,” Dolores said, and turned to kiss her fingers.

“What about you?” Anathema said. “Why did you throw yourself into this? Weren’t you worried you’d blow your cover?” Dolores scrambled upright, almost hitting her head on the roof of the car. “Hey, it’s okay. I already knew from a witch genealogy that the Pemberleys died out fifty years ago. I figured you have your reasons. But why this?” Anathema gestured to their naked bodies. “Was it about the conquest? Fucking a Device?”

“It’s not about conquest,”[10] Dolores said. “It’s just – you’re young to have an apprentice, and you didn’t know me, and you agreed to take me on anyway. People aren’t usually kind to me for no reason.”

“I like being kind to people for no reason,” Anathema said helplessly. “I usually do things for way too _many_ reasons. It feels good to just – _do_.”

Before her apprenticeship ended, Dolores told Anathema her real name. “Oh. I’m sorry,” Anathema said, taking her hand, and it hurt Dolores to let her go.

  


_Now._

  


“There’s something you need to know before we go in there,” Sophie says, as she and Nate scope out the bookshop from a cafe around the corner. Apparently the shop has unpredictable hours, and they need to look out for the hand-lettered sign flipping from CLOSED to OPEN. She waits for Nate to finish his gulp of coffee before going on. “I’m a witch.”

Nate chokes on nothing. “Come again?”

“I’m a witch, Nate.” Sophie sighs. “It’s so hard to demonstrate. Witch magic is subtle and elegant... Hmmm. You haven’t had a drink in twenty-four hours.”

Nate raises his eyebrows. “You’re saying you know that because of witch powers?”

“I can see it in your aura!” It has that crisp snap of irritability Nate gets from a full day of sobriety. “Don’t tell me there aren’t times I got away from you in the old days that you can’t explain.”

Nate narrows his eyes. “That’s no reason to chalk it up to the supernatural.”

She blows out a breath and leans back in her chair. “You’re just going to have to follow my lead in the bookshop and trust me. I know things about this kind of special circumstance that you don’t, as little as you like to admit that –”

“Hey,” Nate says. “The sign’s flipped to OPEN.”

Sophie sighs and abandons the last of her coffee. Showtime, then. They fall into their easy grifting rhythm, Sophie the eager nerdy tourist and Nate her impatient husband, already bickering as they open the shop door. It’s beautiful in there, the air alive with the smell of old books. Sophie genuinely exclaims over a first edition of _Jane Eyre_ while Nate rolls his eyes and paces dramatically. There’s no sign of Mr. Fell, even though any good businessman would have come by now to encourage her into a sale, especially with the store liable to be closed down any day now. Hardison wasn’t kidding about the bad reviews.

She strokes the cover of _Jane Eyre_ and opens it, releasing more old book smell. That’s when she finally hears footsteps between the shelves. When she looks up from the book, she gasps.

Mr. Fell is a chintzy, overstuffed sofa of a man, but his aura is a blazing golden crown and a pair of vast wings made of white light. “Oh dear. You’re a witch, aren’t you? A sensitive one. Come along, easy does it…” He takes the book out of her unresisting hands and reshelves it. Then he touches her lightly on the elbow and steers her to a creaking, velvet-upholstered chair. “I’ll just back off until your equilibrium is restored, shall I?”

That’s when Nate bursts in on the scene in his most obnoxious grifting persona. “What are you doing with my wife, huh? Trying to fleece her with your rotting old books, huh? What was he telling you, honey?”

“Drop it, Nate,” Sophie says, rubbing her temples. “Mr. Fell isn’t a dragon. He’s an angel.”

Nate falters. His voice goes back to normal. “What?”

“Whatever gave you the idea I was a dragon?” the angel says, astonished.

“Angels aren’t real, Sophie,” Nate says, clearly more to convince himself than anyone else.

“They are. You’re standing right in front of one,” Sophie says, carefully keeping the golden vision at the corner of her eye. She can see from the fear in Nate’s eyes that he’s starting to actually believe her.

“They’re not,” Nate says, half-growling, “and even if they _were_ , they wouldn’t be running _bookshops_ , they’d be in _children’s cancer wards_ , actually doing something to _help_!”

The angel clears his throat. “It’s not really my remit to _do_ the good works myself, you know, it’s to inspire _humans_ to make choices that –”

Nate wheels around and punches the angel in the neck.

The angel falls to the floor with a crash, tumbling books from their displays. Sophie springs to her feet, wastes a second wondering whether to tend to the angel or restrain Nate, and decides to check on the angel while glaring daggers at Nate. The angel wheezes for breath. Sophie checks the back of his head and finds it raw and red where it hit the floor. “I can’t believe you, Nate!” she cries. “We’ve just met an _actual angel_ and look what you’ve gone and done! You punched him out!”

“He thinks he can just stand there talk about how he’s not supposed to _do_ anything – what are all those prayers for if they’re just going to sit around in bookshops being all _self-righteous_ –”

The angel is in a bad way, and Sophie doesn’t think she can just call an ambulance for a celestial being. “Call his friend Mr. Crowley right now, you absolute bastard!”

“Crowley?” the angel croaks out, his eyes coming more into focus. “Is he here?”

Nate relents and gets out his cell phone. “Mr. Crowley? Yeah, it’s me. Listen, we have, uh, a situation at the bookshop. We could use your help over here. Uh, not exactly. No! No, he’s not dying.”

“No thanks to him!” Sophie shouts toward the phone, making the angel wince. “Nate _punched_ him!”

“ _You WHAT?_ ” Crowley roars, loud enough for Sophie to hear tinnily over the phone line from where she kneels on the floor.

“Listen, I – he hung up.”

“Of course he did,” Sophie huffs.

“Is Crowley coming?” the angel says hopefully.

“Yes, he is. And Nate is not going to hurt you again. What’s your name? It’s not Mr. Fell, is it?”

“‘M the Principality Aziraphale,” the angel says. He stirs and groans. “The floor hurts.”

“Of course,” Sophie says. “Let’s get you up in the chair.” She glares at Nate until he bends down to help, one of them hauling up on each of Aziraphale’s armpits.

Aziraphale leans back in the chair, eyes closed, rubbing his forehead with the heel of his hand. In his aura, his wings are fluffed out, like a wounded bird trying to make itself larger. Nate clears his throat. “Eh, sorry. About that. Should’ve known better. It’s not like there are any Bible stories about angels saving kids or anything like that.” He laughs uneasily. “You’re just the messengers.”

“There’s a lot the Bible leaves out,” Aziraphale says vaguely, massaging his temples. “And I can’t blame you for expecting more of us. God knows we got our priorities badly mixed up at some point along the track.”

Nate’s phone rings. He picks up. “Hi, Hardison. You _met_ her? Of course she is. Come over to the bookshop. Uh, Mr. Fell might be able to clear some of this up for us.” He hangs up.

“How do you two know Crowley?” Aziraphale asks, the question clearly just dawning on him. His head must still be ringing like a struck bell.

Sophie and Nate exchange a look. And just then, the shop door opens, and Crowley strides in like an avenging angel. Except that his aura is a serpent-shaped void in the fabric of the universe, with distant cold stars and a pair of burning sulfurous eyes. He’s not an angel at all.

Sophie clutches at Nate’s arm. “Nate,” she hisses. “That’s a _demon_.”

  


###  **IV. Nate**

  


_Then: Nate & God._

  


It was that eerie hour of night when the world outside the windows was dark and silent, but the hospital was as brightly lit and busy as ever. Carts rolled by in the hallway, and patients' families shuffled from the waiting room to the bathroom and back again. Maggie was home, catching a night in a real bed. Nate had a plastic chair and an aching back.

Nate petted Sam’s sparse, limp hair and said, “You’re gonna be okay, Sam. You’re gonna be fine. There’s a guardian angel looking after you. You remember I told you that, right?”

The nurse looked up from Sam’s chart and smiled sadly. “He probably can’t hear you. The narcotics have him deep under.”

Nate cleared his throat and shook his head. “It’s not about whether he can hear me.[11] It’s just to remind myself. Something like that.”

“Of course,” the nurse murmured, and slipped out of the room.

Nate tried to tune out the gentle beeps and hums of the monitors on Sam. He folded his hands on the white sheets, too self-conscious, even pretty much alone in this hospital room, to hold them in the more traditional prayer position. “Heavenly Father.” His voice cracked on the words. “No, no, no. Can’t say that. What was I thinking. Uh. Dear Lord. If you have any angels to spare, send one Sam’s way, would you?”

He looked up at Sam’s heartbeat monitor. Nothing changed. A bed wheeled by in the hallway. Nate slumped in the hard-backed chair. He said to the ceiling, “I don’t know what I expected.”

As he slowly succumbed to fitful sleep, he thought he heard a woman humming busily to herself, like a nurse doing her rounds, focused and professional and far away.

Weird, Nate thought vaguely as consciousness stole away. The nurse on the night shift had been a man.

  


_Now._

  


Nate doesn’t believe in angels or demons. The world is too cruel a place for angels, and humans don’t need demons around to act like monsters. But he believes in Sophie, and she’s looking at Aziraphale and Crowley like Heaven and Hell have come to this bookshop, and she’s not sure which place she’s going to end up.

“Aziraphale! Are you alright?” says the alleged agent of Hell, sounding frantic. He half-stumbles through the bookshop and folds to his knees in front of Aziraphale’s chair. His hands flutter about, gently alighting on the bump swelling on the back of Aziraphale’s head, the bruise darkening on his neck.

“Oh, I’ll be fine,” Aziraphale says, smiling weakly. “I’ll just have a lie-down and wait for it to pass, I suppose.”

Crowley growls and springs to his feet. He rounds on Nate, getting right in his face. “You! What’d you hurt him for?” He’s hissing somehow, even though there weren’t any sibilants in what he said. Now Nate is really starting to wonder what Sophie sees when she looks at Crowley.

Nate puts his hands up and wishes Eliot would get here already. “Hey. I’m sorry.” He really is. Angels had always been an abstract concept at seminary. They’d talk about what angels were made of, whether they had free will. Until now, Nate never considered the idea of an angel gingerly touching his own neck and wincing in pain, while his friend worries himself into a frenzy over him. “I just – I didn’t have an angel when I really needed one. Meeting one now felt like – some kind of sick joke. I didn’t think. I just reacted.”

Crowley softens, just a little, giving Nate some breathing room. “No one ever _has_ an angel, Mr. Ford. Whether you need one or not. _This_ angel, especially, does exactly as he pleases. Don’t you forget that, or I’ll have to remind you.” That last is a hiss again. Nate’s belief in demons, at least, is making a rapid comeback.

“Leave him be, Crowley,” Aziraphale says, leaning back in the chair with his arm thrown over his eyes. “His remorse is genuine.”

“Make it _genuiner_ ,” Crowley mutters, but goes back to fussing over the angel instead. Nate decides to ignore what it might mean that a demon cares for an angel on the grounds of avoiding a theological headache. Then suddenly, Crowley’s head snaps back toward Nate. “Hang on a minute. You know he’s an angel. How?”

“The lady’s a witch,” Aziraphale says, waving a hand toward Sophie. “A sensitive one. Not like poor dear Anathema.”

“Anathema’s sensitive enough when she cares to look,” Sophie says, indignant. “Wait, you know Anathema?”

“How many supernatural things _are_ there?” Nate demands.

“They’re not all that common,” Sophie says. The door opens, and Parker, Eliot, and Hardison come in, looking excited. Sophie goes on, “I think they just turn up more when our clients are an angel and a demon.”

“Our clients are a _what_ and a _what_?” Hardison says.

“We’re their _clients_?” Aziraphale says. “My dear boy, that young lady tried to steal my Nostradamus!”

Nate raises his eyebrows at Crowley. “Looks like you have some explaining to do, Mr. Crowley.”

Crowley tilts his head back and groans.

  


The sign in the door is flipped around to CLOSED, and they’re all having tea in the back of the shop. Aziraphale is in his chair, Crowley begrudgingly shares the couch with Sophie, and Nate, Parker, Hardison, and Eliot perch on empty crates left over from book shipments. Hardison and Eliot are staring openly at Aziraphale and Crowley, still trying to process the reality of what they are. Nate can understand the feeling. Parker just looks annoyed, maybe because she was wrong about Aziraphale being a dragon.[12]

“ _Crowley_ ,” Aziraphale says, after he’s explained about the Leverage team. “You can’t just hire criminals to do your bidding whenever you’re inconvenienced. We’ve been over this already.”

“I never agreed to those terms,” Crowley argues. “Besides, you’re about to lose your shop, and we’re both cut off from our miracles! You can’t even heal that bruise on your neck!” He glares at Nate again.

“I can muddle along without a bookshop. I didn’t open this one until 1800.”

“You could, but you don’t _have_ to, because I hired these nice criminals to help!”

“I know Heaven isn’t keeping score anymore, but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to profit off of crime.”

“I wouldn’t call anything about this bookshop _profitable_ –”

Parker interrupts. “Aziraphale. You’re an angel. What good things do you do?”

Aziraphale blinks, caught off guard. “Well. I suppose I mostly try to inspire humans to do good. Give them pep talks. Show them books that might give them nice ideas.”

“Angel,” Crowley says exasperatedly. “You hardly talk to anyone besides me, and you chase people off before they can buy any of your _inspiring_ books.”

“We’re called Leverage,” Parker says, staring intently at Aziraphale. “We help people who get hurt by the rich and powerful. People the system doesn’t help. We go outside the system and give them back what got taken from them. Sometimes bad guys make the best good guys.” At that, Aziraphale’s mouth softens, and he steals a sideways look at Crowley, who sniffs and turns away. Parker jabs an accusing finger at Aziraphale. “So that means we’re better at being angels than you.”

“ _Parker_!” Hardison says, scandalized.

To Nate’s surprise, Aziraphale beams like the sun could shine right out of him. Again, he wonders what he looks like through Sophie’s eyes. “Yes, you are! That’s exactly it.”

“And some people are better at being demons than demons,” Eliot says.

Crowley nods sagely.

“So you can’t say you’re too good for our help,” Parker points out.

“Well,” Aziraphale says, a little flustered. He looks at Crowley. “She’s got me there, hasn’t she?”

“She has,” Crowley says with a quirk of his mouth. “Impeccable logic.”

Hardison says, “Can we tell you about what happened at T’ruah Holdings now?”

“Go ahead, Hardison,” Nate says.

“Parker swiped files from the CEO’s office,” Hardison says. “T’ruah Holdings’ MO is to buy out mom-and-pop stores in trendy neighborhoods by any means necessary, then flipping them to big money developers to make high-end luxury storefronts or new condos. They also provide security for fancy apartment buildings. Real nasty piece of work, wiping out all the small business. All of this started when they got a new CEO a few years back. Hilda Guerra. Who Eliot recognized in the hallway while giving Parker cover for her getaway.”

“I met her on a job for T’ruah Holdings,” Eliot says. “She looks different now, but her eyes – I knew her right away. I don’t know if she’s a demon like you, Crowley, or something else. But she’s something uncanny, that’s for damn sure.”

  


###  **V. Eliot**

  


_Then: Eliot & War._

  


“Allow me to congratulate you on the peace accords,” the journalist said with an off-kilter smirk. She’d introduced herself as _Carmine Zuigiber_ , _war correspondent._ “So, tell me. How did this war start in the first place?”

“A drought struck their lands, and they started to encroach into the borders of ours,” said the grizzled captain Carmine was interviewing. “Even though the border is ours by right from the last treaty. Stealing water, cattle…”

“How awful,” Carmine crooned. There was a reddish haze in her eyes that made Eliot nervous. He suppressed the urge to reach for the gun he’d promised himself not to use – not an urge he’d had for a while now, and wasn’t that odd in itself? “That must have made you so _angry_. Violating all those old agreements…”

Enough was enough. Eliot stepped between Carmine and the captain. “This interview is over. I need both of you to go back to your camps.”

“Oh, but we only just got started!” Carmine said.

“I’m in charge of security on this base,” Eliot said firmly. “This is for your own safety.” He nods to the captain and takes Carmine’s arm all gentleman-like. He can feel tension in her like a bowstring, but in the end she goes along with him, stepping out into the cool arid night.

“You don’t have a head for business, do you?” she said, smiling with a hint of a sneer. “If you want to keep getting the kind of _independent contracts_ you do, you’ll let me talk with him again.”

She looked into his eyes, and Eliot felt it again, a sudden wild urge to reach for his gun and do _something_ with it: force everyone off the base at gunpoint, kill his boss and take over, stop all these goddamn idiots who started all these wars with a righteous war of his own.

No. Eliot couldn’t control what was happening out here. He couldn’t even stop this woman, whoever or whatever she was. But he could control himself. He took a deep breath of dry air. “Whatever you’re doing,” he said, very calmly, “don’t try it on me again. I don’t take these jobs because I love the fight[13]. I’m keeping this place safe. That’s what I was hired to do.”

“Oh, Eliot Spencer,” Carmine said, relishing the sound of his name in her mouth. “You talk as if I haven’t used you for my ends already.” There was a laugh in her eyes, and she pulled her arm from his and walked straight into the endless dry scrub, as if there was already a path beaten for her there.

  


_Now._

__  


Hardison and Aziraphale are arguing over the comms while they wait.

“The Earth is _not_ six thousand years old!” Hardison shouts. Eliot resists the urge to take his comm out and crush it. “What about the Doppler shift in the cosmic background radiation!”

“I never said the entire _universe_ was six thousand years old,” Aziraphale says patiently. “I said the _Earth_ is six thousand years old.”

“But the carbon-dating on the fossils –”

“All part of God’s Ineffable Plan –”

“Why would God want to trick us into thinking the Earth is 3.7 billion years old? What is the _point_?”

“That’s what _I_ said,” Crowley grumbles, “and look where that got me.”

Crowley. Eliot watches Crowley flip through a gossip magazine in the corporate waiting room, then goes over and taps him on the shoulder. When Crowley looks up, Eliot takes out his comm. “Can I talk to you?”

The demon takes out his comm and smiles at it. He catches Aziraphale’s eye, gestures to it, and grins, as if to say _isn’t it just like the spy movies?_ Aziraphale grins back, flashes him a double thumbs up, and goes back to his murmured argument with Hardison. Then Crowley nods and follows Eliot out of the waiting room into a quiet corridor.

“What’s it like?” Eliot says. He looks from the void of Crowley’s sunglasses down to the floor, then back up.

Somehow Eliot can feel Crowley’s stare intensifying behind his sunglasses. “This isn’t idle curiosity.”

Eliot grits his teeth. “You’re a demon. Can’t you see it? The things I’ve done to my soul?”

Crowley shakes his head. “It doesn’t work like that. We can’t see souls. Or at least Aziraphale and I can’t. We work out who might be receptive to a miracle or a temptation the same way humans have always figured each other out. Observation and guesswork.”

“I don’t have to guess,” Eliot says. “I know where I’m bound. Just – would you mind telling me what to expect when I get there?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what happens to human souls after death,”[14] Crowley says. “Not my department. All the parts of Hell I’ve been to are demons-only.”

“How could you not know?” Eliot says. “I thought that was the whole point of you. To punish us who’ve done wrong.”

“Eliot Spencer,” Crowley says softly. “I have got no idea what the point of me is.”

The door to the office of Hilda Guerra, CEO of T’ruah Holdings, opens. “Come in.”

Eliot braces himself and puts his comm back in. He and Crowley go into the office, followed by Aziraphale. The others are outside the building – they don’t want to burn all their faces on an ongoing job. Eliot already knows her, whatever she is, and Aziraphale and Crowley are the ones who might actually know what she is.

As soon as they walk in, Aziraphale draws himself even more upright than he usually does. He _declaims_ , in a way that finally helps Eliot see his angelic nature, “ _War_.”

“I knew they’d be back,” Crowley mutters darkly.

“Knew _who’d_ be back?” Eliot says, studying this woman who looks nothing like Carmine Zuigiber, war correspondent, except for that terrifying reddish glint in her eyes.

Aziraphale says, “The Four Horsemen,” and Eliot finally realizes how far over his head he’s gotten himself in.

“You know how it is,” War says, settling in the huge office chair behind her desk. “We can’t be killed, only inconveniently discorporated. We’re back, and we’re trying something new.”

“Real estate?” Crowley says. “Seems a little petty for the likes of you.”

“Gentrification is such a gentle word, isn’t it?” War muses. “Sounds almost respectable. But when you get right down to it, it’s an occupying force. Sanitizing places, displacing people, imposing a violent new regime. It’s a beautiful new face for me to wear. And I’ve had so _many_ faces.” She winks at Eliot, who grinds his teeth.

“It might be a new type of war,” Eliot subvocalizes, quieter than human hearing but enough for Hardison’s finely-tuned comms to pick up. “But it’s the type of war Leverage can fight. It’s not a war with minefields and mustard gas. It’s a war with boardrooms and corrupt cops and town meetings. That’s where we operate. She wants to take this to our turf? Let her try.”

“She’s a Horseman of the Apocalypse,” Aziraphale says, fretting with his ring, his sleeves. He shoots Eliot a worried glance.

“And who better to fight the Horsemen than a group of humans?” Crowley subvocalizes, smirking. “Haven’t we learned that by now?”

Out loud, so War can hear, Eliot says, “I know what you are. I know what we can handle. I’ve seen enough.” And he lowers his eyes, as if in defeat.

“I’m going to have so much fun when the _real_ apocalypse comes,” War tells the angel and the demon, with a grin Eliot can hear.

Aziraphale sniffs. “Well, good luck. I don’t see my flaming sword here, do you?”

Eliot doesn’t linger to hear them argue. He walks right out of the grim office building into the sun, out to the parking lot, where the rest of the team is waiting. Aziraphale and Crowley join them, hovering uncertainly outside their circle.

“Are you going to let her take away your shop?” Nate says. “Your neighborhood? Your city? You’re a Principality, right, Aziraphale? You’re meant to guide a nation.”

“God save me from lapsed seminary students,” Aziraphale mutters.

“Oh, you know you love them, angel,” Crowley says. “Always asking all the right questions.”

“You said you could live without your bookshop,” Hardison says, watching Aziraphale. “But there’s lots of people in London who can’t live without their homes and businesses. She’s gonna occupy the city. Take all of that away.”

“It’s not my role to do the good deeds,” Aziraphale says helplessly. “But if we worked together on saving the bookshop. Would you say you’d find that… inspiring?”

“Oh yes,” Sophie says, eyes sparkling. “We’d get all kinds of ideas for community advocacy and good works, if you got us started on the right path.”

Crowley leans on Aziraphale’s shoulder. “And you’d get her grubby, sword-stealing hands off _your shop_ ,” he hisses in the angel’s ear.

“Well, all right,” Aziraphale relents. “Though I’m not sure how much use we’ll be without any miracles.”

“We’ll make our own,” Nate says, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s go steal back a bookshop.”

* * *

[1]  Well, alright, it’s kind of about sticking it to the Man. Hardison and the American commission in charge of regulating the internet have what you might call standing disagreements. [return to text]

[2]  Crowley invented [goto statements](https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/292:_goto). [return to text]

[3]  This is what a keysmash looks like on a [Dvorak keyboard](https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1445:_Efficiency), which Hardison of course uses, as part of his quest to optimize every aspect of his hacking workflow. [return to text]

[4]  He privately finds this joke very funny. [return to text]

[5]  His searches redirected him to [music videos of a song about a frog named Anthony Rowley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkK4t1Rmvy4). All Crowley’s doing, of course. [return to text]

[6]  Parker coughed up black muck for a week after that particular test of her fortitude. Archie passed her a handkerchief and never, ever apologized. [return to text]

[7]  Well, alright, it’s kind of about the money. But money is security, knowing that she never has to be a hungry little girl again. [return to text]

[8]  Not to be confused with the thing Eliot does with his eyes that scares people. [return to text]

[9]  No, she’s not going to mention the family _name_ – nice try. [return to text]

[10]  Well, alright, it’s kind of about conquest. But Sophie never wants to own her marks – just hold them in her hands for a moment, then let them go. [return to text]

[11]  Well, alright, it was kind of about Sam maybe hearing him. Nate has spent a lot of his life talking to beings he’s not sure can hear him. [return to text]

[12]  It’s actually because Parker has recently started to commit herself to learning about and doing the right thing, and the seeming existence of beings of pure good and pure evil is throwing off her calculations. [return to text]

[13]  Well, alright, it’s kind of because he loves the fight. But he loves it because it’s about proving himself _to_ himself. [return to text]

[14]  Nor has he ever tried to find out – he suspects the answer might obliterate whatever faith in the universe he has left. [return to text]

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] The Soho Bookshop Job](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20331091) by [aethel-multivoice (aethel)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aethel/pseuds/aethel-multivoice), [blackglass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackglass/pseuds/blackglass), [elaineofshalott (LadyofMisrule)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyofMisrule/pseuds/elaineofshalott), [klb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/klb/pseuds/klb), [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins), [secretsofluftnarp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretsofluftnarp/pseuds/secretsofluftnarp), [wingedwords (gunpowderandlove)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gunpowderandlove/pseuds/wingedwords), [wordsaremyfaith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordsaremyfaith/pseuds/wordsaremyfaith)




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